Chapter 13: When Magic Gets Sick
1174 Words
Fairy godmothers aren't supposed to get sick.
They're supposed to wave wands and make everything better. They're supposed to sparkle and smile and never, ever cough blood into a rusted tin cup at four in the morning when no one else is awake.
But Arin wasn't a real fairy godmother.
She was just a girl with needle scars and a brother she couldn't save and a body that had finally run out of magic.
---
It started with a cough.
A small one, at first. Arin dismissed it, waving her hand like she could swat the sound away. "Just the cold," she said. "It's nothing."
But it wasn't nothing.
The cough dug deeper, settled into her chest like it was building a home there. Her skin turned pale, then grayish, then the color of old paper. Her breathing became shallow, each inhale a visible effort.
She stopped eating. "Not hungry," she said, pushing away the bowl of soup I'd saved for her.
She stopped sleeping. At night, I felt her body rigid beside mine, fighting for air.
On the fifth day, she tried to stand and her legs gave out.
Jax caught her before she hit the floor. His face was the color of ash.
"We need medicine," he said. "Real medicine. Not herbs. Not hope."
---
That night, the children went to war with the city.
Not with weapons. With desperation.
They slipped out in pairs, small shadows moving through alleys and back streets. They returned with stolen wallets, snatched purses, pockets full of change lifted from unattended coats.
Kaya, who had barely spoken since we rescued her, came back with a woman's watch still warm from her wrist.
Mateo brought a wallet thick with credit cards he couldn't use.
Finn, the little boy wearing Leo's blue sweater, held out a handful of crumpled bills with trembling fingers.
"We need more," Jax said, counting the meager pile. "This isn't enough for a doctor, let alone medicine."
So they went out again.
And again.
Each night, they brought back more—coins, jewelry, once a small tablet computer Sam insisted he could sell. They didn't talk about what they'd done to get these things. They didn't meet each other's eyes.
Arin didn't know.
She lay on her mattress, burning with fever, too weak to ask where the money came from. I held her hand and lied. "It's okay," I whispered. "We're taking care of everything."
Her fingers squeezed mine, barely.
---
The seventh night, Noah didn't come back.
We waited until the moon was high, then low, then hidden by clouds. Sam stood by the door, his perfect memory reciting the minutes. Forty-seven. Eighty-two. One hundred and nineteen.
"He's just late," Kaya said, her voice too bright. "He got lost. He'll find his way."
But we all knew.
Noah was the smallest of the new kids, barely six years old, with wide brown eyes and a habit of humming when he was scared. He'd gone out with Mateo to lift a wallet near the bus station. Mateo came back alone.
"He was right behind me," Mateo said, his voice cracking. "I turned around and he was just… gone."
We found out why at dawn.
The sirens came first—distant, then closer, then surrounding us. Red and blue lights bled through the cracks in the boathouse walls. Jax pressed his ear to the door, his face draining of color.
"Police," he breathed. "At least six cars. They're surrounding the building."
Sam's lips moved silently, counting. Maya stared at the door with her eerie, empty calm. Lily and Ben clung to each other.
I looked at Arin. She was barely conscious, her breath a shallow rattle. She didn't know the police were here. She didn't know we were about to lose everything.
The door splintered open.
"Nobody move!" A voice, loud and sharp. Flashlights cut through the dim space, illuminating our faces—dirty, terrified, young.
An officer paused when she saw the children huddled in the corner. Twelve new kids, plus Jax, Maya, Sam, Lily, Ben, and me. All under twelve. All covered in grime and fear.
"Jesus," she whispered. "They're just babies."
They found Noah in the back of a squad car, wrapped in an officer's jacket, clutching Leo's blue sweater like a security blanket. He'd been caught pickpocketing at the bus station and had immediately confessed everything—the hideout, the other children, the sick girl who needed medicine.
He thought he was saving us.
In a way, he was.
---
The police station was too bright, too loud, too full of adults who kept saying "foster care" and "social services" and "where are your parents?"
I didn't answer. None of us did.
They separated us at first, but I could hear the others through the thin walls—Jax refusing to speak, Maya's eerie silence, Sam reciting numbers louder and louder until an officer told him to stop.
Arin was taken away in an ambulance, strapped to a stretcher, an oxygen mask over her face. I tried to follow, but hands held me back.
"She needs me," I said. "She's the only family I have."
An officer with kind eyes knelt in front of me. "We're taking her to the hospital, sweetheart. They're going to make her better."
"And then what?"
She didn't answer.
---
The social worker who came to see me was named Patricia. She had gray hair and reading glasses on a chain and a file folder thick with other children's stories.
"Ella," she said softly, "we've been looking for you for a long time."
I stared at the floor.
"The Millers reported you missing over a month ago. They've been very worried."
I laughed at that. A strange, hollow sound I didn't recognize as my own. "They're not worried. They're angry they lost their paycheck."
Patricia was quiet for a long moment. Then she closed the folder.
"Tell me what happened, Ella."
I didn't trust her. I didn't trust anyone. But Arin was in a hospital bed and Leo was in Silas's lab and I was so, so tired of carrying everything alone.
So I told her.
Not everything. Not the milk or the instruments or the locked door. Not Silas or the experiments or the Thorne Variant. Those secrets were too heavy, too dangerous.
But I told her about Arin. About Leo. About the boathouse and the garden and the children who became family.
When I finished, Patricia removed her glasses and wiped her eyes.
"I'm going to make some calls," she said.
---
They didn't send us back to Saint Agnes's.
Saint Agnes's was for orphans, they said. Children with no one. But we weren't orphans—we were runaways, thieves, children who had chosen the streets over the homes we'd been given. That made us different. That made us problems.
So they sent us to St. Catherine's Home for Lost Children.
The name was a lie, of course. We weren't lost. We knew exactly where we were. We just didn't want to be there.
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